It's no secret that "tolerance" is a one way street on many
college campuses these days. Political correctness has become so deeply
rooted in the halls of academia that it's hardly remarked upon any more,
bizarre educational offerings are accepted as a matter of course, and
the freedom of expression is sacrosanct . . . except when someone doesn't
toe the orthodox line. Refuse to do that, and the defenders of free speech
will begin casting stones without a moment of hesitation. This little
hypocrisy has been around for quite a while, but occasionally a new incident
will receive some media attention and show how intolerant the forces of
tolerance really are.

Neo-conservative author David Horowitz recently attempted to place a
paid, full-page advertisement in 51 college newspapers around the country.
The ad was titled "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad
Idea for Blacks--and Racist, Too." The ad went on to list his reasons
together with a brief explanation of each. Nine papers decided to run
the ad, among them the UC Davis Aggie, the University of Wisconsin Badger
Herald, the Brown University Daily Herald, and the UC Berkeley Daily Californian.
Other papers--at Harvard, Notre Dame, Columbia, and the University of
Virginia, for example--refused. [check out an image of the ad here
(254K) or read it here]

In the face of the inevitable protests, the Daily Californian apologized
for being "an inadvertent vehicle for bigotry," just one day
after the ad ran. The Aggie followed suit. In contrast, the Badger Herald
and the Daily Herald stood by their decisions to run the ad, despite considerable
pressure.

About 100 screaming protesters demonstrated in front of the Wisconsin
paper's office, yet the only response they received was an editorial condemning
the Berkeley editors for giving in to pressure that "unfortunately
violated their professional integrity and journalistic duty to protect
speech with which they disagree."

At Brown, nearly 4,000 copies of the Daily Herald were stolen by young
adults in a student coalition protesting the publication of the ad, within
minutes of the paper's delivery. Before the papers were stolen, the student
group had demanded free advertising space and a donation to a student
minority organization in an amount equivalent to a full-page ad fee. The
paper refused, and its editor-in-chief opined that "it's disgraceful
not to run an ad because people on your campus are going to disagree with
it."

What is truly disgraceful is the behavior of the Berkeley and Davis editors,
and many of the protestors at Brown and Wisconsin.

The students at Brown justified taking every issue of the paper they
could lay hands on as "a legitimate act of civil disobedience."
Since it was free, one religious studies professor added, there was nothing
wrong with trying to take the entire press run.

A student at Wisconsin up in arms at the Badger Herald office shouted
that the ad "isn't free speech, it's hate speech," a comment
the professor at Brown echoed. Another Brown student went so far as to
claim the student coalition "has never opposed free speech."

And there's the problem. For the editors who apologized and the students
who ran amok, speech is only legitimate when they agree with it. If it's
something they don't like--Horowitz's ad, a guest speaker on campus, or
whatever--it's suddenly hate speech (or whatever name they coin for it),
and the rules don't apply anymore.

When Dan Flynn, author of a monograph on convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal,
visited Berkeley last fall, he was shouted off the stage, copies of his
monograph were stolen, and the crowd actually held a book burning--while
several students carried signs exhorting their fellows to "fight
racist censorship."

This sort of hypocrisy is blatant and ludicrous, and unfortunately, it's
not something that can be brushed off as mere college activism. The people
who are running around burning monographs, demanding that dissent be stifled,
and apologizing for running an unpopular ad have been through at least
twelve years of school. They are in college. They are over 18. They are
supposed to be adults. In a few years, they'll be out in the workplace.
And yet they cannot or will not see that they have become the very thing
that they denounce.

It gets worse, though. Kenneth Knies, a graduate student and teaching
assistant at Brown, said: "I have talked to students who told me
they can't perform basic functions like walking or sleeping because of
this ad." How completely absurd.

We are concerned about the double standard applied in today's PC environment,
and rightly so. But perhaps we should also worry about those people Knies
talked to, the ones who are ready to spend their lives in a state of perpetual
outrage, either real or feigned. It's bad enough that our colleges are
turning out people who embrace the tyranny of the majority. The last thing
we need is for them to glorify rage as well.